Re: FLOS manuals

  • From: Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:21:54 -0400

Hi Chris,
Your original post on this topic said that you were doing this in conjunction with the FSF membership coordinator, who presumably is quite familiar with FSF policies and practices. Also, Adam said in the message you forwarded that almost all the manuals were GPL, so the few that were not could have been removed if that was important.
Besides the suggestions that list members had given you about free file sharing services, Elf then gave you info about how to upload to his public FTP account. After we subsequently determined that nothing had been sent via FTP, you asked for the FTP info again, which Elf repeated. The files were then sent as email attachments instead.
The discussion about the inaccessible .WebSite format was also under the email subject of Floss manuals, to which you have otherwise responded, so I do not know why that discussion was missed. I do realize that can happen with email, but it puzzles me that you never thought to check that the files had been received in usable form since your goal was to make them publicly available..
The FCC is not conducting a proceeding on Section 255; the Access Board is. More importantly, this project has had no relation to that proceeding, so there has been no issue in discussing the project with me. 

Jamal

On 6/10/2010 5:56 PM, Chris Hofstader wrote:

Hi,

First, I fucked up when I led people to believe that this was an FSF/GNU
project. Most of the manuals are about proprietary systems and,
therefore, FSF/GNU cannot endorse them by working to get them any sort
of wider distribution.

I should not have included reference to Deborah or FSF in any way but I
was pretty new to being a GNU full time employee and I didn't know all
of the rules. To make things worse, I hadn't looked at the list of items
that Floss distributes so I had no idea if they were free software
oriented or a more general This was a mistake, not waiting for Adam from
Floss Manuals to provide the tar ball that he promised before Susan
jumped in to try to get it done.

Also, Susan never got a note from Mr. Elf telling her that there was a
problem which we could have addressed more than a month ago. If we don't
know thereis a problem, we won't try to fix it.

Now that our 508/255 refresh comments are pretty much done (we have a
few grammar and paragraph flow problems), I can actually talk to you
without any sense of impropriety. I wouldn't want to hear that you got
in trouble for working with FSF/GNU people who were working on making
suggestions about regulations that your agency is responsible for
enforcing. I've seen lots of others get in trouble for questionable
communications between an advocacy and software development group like
us and a regulator like you.

Also, I will *never* pre-announce *anything* without the knowledge that
what is being announced has already happened as problems regarding
projects that require a lot of volunteers can get erratic.

You also complained recently that GNU does not have an accessibility web
page. We're doing some research on various licenses so we are only
linking to free software. I think you will like how we are doing it as
it is wiki based.

If Elf posted to the blind programmer list about the weird file format I
didn't see that message. With over 500 emails per day, I can't do too
much more than skim through the mailing list posts.

I expected it will be a .tar.gz available for ftp download very soon.

As for "first impressions" I think the rave reviews that the vinux
distro have caused anyone looking for the manuals to have forgotten
about the books and, instead, are enjoying the bits.

To recap:

1. I should never have let FSF be mentioned in my original announcement.

2. I should have answered all questions regarding the Floss project by
refering people to Adam and washed my hands of the affair. Instead, I
asked Susan to work on it and send the information to the Elf. She did
the best she could and didn't know enough about some of the tools on the
command line to succeed in the task.

I expect it will be available for download sometime tomorrow.

Happy Hacking,
cdh


On 06/10/2010 03:39 PM, Jamal Mazrui wrote:

Chris,
Unfortunately, this has become frustrating, and it is affecting my
motivation to get involved in FSF projects. Below is the message you
posted at the end of March indicating an FSF-related effort you were
undertaking to make all available Floss manuals easily accessible to
blind people -- with distribution help from Elf and me after we got
the collection. Multiple list members responded to your post,
expressing strong interest in such documentation.

Every few weeks, after hearing nothing about follow up, I have
inquired about the status. Almost every time you have said that you
forgot about it, and indicated that your wife will take the next step.
Although you have your own web space on DreamHost, and other free
services exist for sharing a large archive, the manuals were
apparently individually sent to Inthane as about 40 email attachments
in a format he could not open.


While other accessibility efforts are surely underway, this is the
first impression many of us are getting about the FSF commitment to
accessibility. Isn't it time to take charge of this matter yourself,
and ensure delivery on an offer that was made to our community?

Jamal

-- Original Message --
From: Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:53:15 -0400
Subject: Fwd: Floss manuals for people with vision impairment

Hi,

Deborah, the FSF membership coordinator, and I sent an email to the
person in
charge of Floss Manuals, the company that published the command line
tutorial I
mentioned earlier. Adam says that almost all of their books use GPL as
their
license and that he can provide their entire catalogue in PDF rolled
up into a
big .tar
file. His note is below.

This is all happening pretty fast so I haven't had the chance to take
a look at
the rest of the books they have but I'd bet that some will interest
some of you.

If Jamal or Elf want, they can take the entire .tar open it up and put
as much
as they like on their sites. If PDF needs to be converted to text, I'm
sure
that won't be too hard.

Begin forwarded message:


From: adam hyde <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



hey Chris and Deborah,

All books from FLOSS Manuals are available under a free license and

you

are welcome to use them as you choose for free as long as the same
license is maintained (we use the GPL for all books except 3 or 4

which

are either CC-BY-SA or FDL). We can provide PDF, plain html (each book
on one page) or odt. Probably for us the PDF is the easiest to

provide.


Here is an example of a PDF from us:
<http://en.flossmanuals.net/Ardour/FM_22Mar10.pdf>

we can provide you with a tar of all the manuals in pdf if you like...

adam

Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 177 4935122
Email : adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals

"Free manuals for free software"
<http://www.flossmanuals.net/about>





On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Jamal Mazrui wrote:


Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:45:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: FLOS manuals

Elf reported to the list that the 40 or so files were in a Macintosh
.WebSite format that he could not access. He was going to search for
a tool that would enable him to open the files, but no one knew of a
Windows-based one that could definately do the job.

Can't you post the collection in a zip archive somewhere (DreamHost,
SendSpace, or whatever)?

Jamal


On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Chris Hofstader wrote:


Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:50:59 -0400
From: Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: FLOS manuals

I think Susan did a handoff to Mr. Elf a couple of weeks ago.

I've been covered in tar and feathers volunteering on the clean-up
in Alabama all week so this effort hasn't even crossed my mind in
the slightest.

cdh

PS: Please call me to discuss the things I left on your voice mail
last week.

On 06/10/2010 11:13 AM, Jamal Mazrui wrote:

Can we get a status update on making an accessible collection of
these available?

Jamal

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